Generating ideas for artwork

Recently I had an email from a fan of The New Creative Artist, Mark Spall of Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He has a nifty idea for working up ideas for new watercolors. Mark says, "I filled my cork board with little 5 inch square pieces of paper. I have 24 in total, and what I wanna do is make a sketch one at a time on each of them from a vision in my mind of what I would like to watercolor. Then when my board is full of sketches I can choose which ones to design color schemes for on watercolor paper, and then after that stage have one break-though after the other. Hope it works." Sounds like a great idea to me. Mark describes his creative process in three phases. "The first one is to do many thumbnail sketches on 5 inch square pieces of paper. I chose to do up to 24 for my project. All you're focusing on at this stage is the proportion, light, and shadow. I have put my sketches up side by side on my cork board but you can store them in whichever way works best for you. Then in the second phase I decide which thumbnails I would like to design a color scheme for. I select one of my sketches and decide which colors to use and how to use them. I begin painting from my reference sketch. This stage may take more then one try, but once I am satisfied with the proportions I worked out in the first stage and my colors are successful, I'm ready to choose the size I want the final painting to be and proceed to create my masterpiece from my second phase. Once I've completed my painting I'm ready to choose another idea from the cork board to work on." Sounds like a good process to me. Thanks for sharing, Mark.